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“ Pass 
Prosperity 
Around” 


* 


!> 


Speech of 

Albert J. Beveridge 

Temporary Chairman of 
Progressive National Convention 


‘ ‘These special interests which suck 
the people’s substance are bi-partisan 
. They are the invisible government 
behind our visible government.” 


















“Pass Prosperity Around” 


We stand for a nobler America. We stand for an un¬ 
divided Nation. We stand for a broader liberty, a taller 
■justice. We stand for social brotherhood as against savage 
individualism. We stand for an intelligent co-operation in¬ 
stead of a reckless competition. We stand for mutual help¬ 
fulness instead of mutual hatred. We stand for equal rights 
as a fact of life instead of a catch-word of politics. We 
stand for the rule of the people as a practical truth instead 
of a meaningless pretense. We stand for a representative 
government that represents the people. We battle for the 
actual rights of man. 

To carry out our principles we have a plain program ot 
constructive reform. We mean to tear down only that 
which is wrong and out of date; and where we tear down 
we mean to build what is right and fitted to the times. We 
harken to the call of the present. We mean to make laws j 
fit conditions as they are and meet the needs of the people j 
who are on earth to-day. That we may do this we found a j 
party through which all who believe with us can work with I 
us; or, rather, we declare our allegiance to the party which 
the people themselves have founded. 

For this party comes from the grass roots. It has 
grown from the soil of the people’s hard necessities. It has 
the vitality of the people’s strong convictions. The people 
have work to be done and our party is here to do that work. 
Abuse will only strengthen it, ridicule only hasten its 
growth, falsehood only speed its victory. 

For years this party has been forming. Parties exist 
for the.people; not the people for parties. Yet for years 
the politicians have made the people do the work of the 
parties instead of the parties doing the work of the people 
—and the politicians own the parties. The people vote for 
one party and find their hopes turned to ashes on their lips; 
and then, to punish that party, they vote for the other party/ 
So it is that partisan victories have come to be merely the 
people’s vengeance; and always the secret powers have 
played their game. 

Like other free people, most of us Americans are pro¬ 
gressive or reactionary, liberal or conservative. The neu¬ 
trals do not count. Yet to-day neither of the old parties is 
either wholly progressive or wholly reactionary. Demo¬ 
cratic politicians and office seekers say to reactionary Demo¬ 
cratic voters that the Democratic party is reactionary 
enough to express reactionary views; and they say to pro¬ 
gressive Democrats that the Democratic paify is pro¬ 
gressive enough to express progressive views. At the same 





• « 3 = 

jaV“ 


< 3 

time. Republican politicians and office seekers say the same 
thing about the Republican party to progressive and re¬ 
actionary Republican voters. 

Sometimes in both Democratic and Republican States 
the progressive get control of the party locally and then 
the reactionaries recapture the same party in the same 
State; ov this process is reversed. So there is no nation¬ 
wide unity of principle in either party, no stability of pur¬ 
pose, no clear-cut and sincere program of one party at 
frank and open war with an equally clear-cut and sincere 
program of an opposing party. 

This unintelligent tangle is seen in Congress. Republi¬ 
can and Democratic Senators and Representatives, believ¬ 
ing alike on broad measures affecting the whole Republic, 
find it hard to vote together because of the nominal differ¬ 
ence of their party membership. When, sometimes, under 
resistless conviction, they do vote together, we have this 
foolish spectacle; legislators calling themselves Republi¬ 
cans and Democrats support the same policy, the Demo¬ 
cratic legislators declaring that that policy is Democratic 
and Republican legislators declaring that it is Republican; 
and at the very same time other Democratic and Republi¬ 
can legislators oppose that very same policy, each of them 
declaring that it is not Democratic or not Republican. 

The Degrading Boss System 

The condition makes it impossible most of the time, and 
hard at any time, for the people’s legislators who believe 
in the same broad policies to enact them into logical, com¬ 
prehensive laws. It confuses the public mind. It breeds 
suspicion and distrust. It enables such special interests as 
seek unjust gain at the public expense to get what they 
want. It creates and fosters the degrading boss system in 
American politics through which these special interests work. 

This boss system is unknown and impossible under any 
Qther free government in the world. In its very nature it is 
hostile to the general welfare. Yet it has grown until it 
now is a controlling influence in American public affairs. 
At the present moment notorious bosses are in the saddle 
of both old parties in various important States which must 
be carried to elect a President. This Black Horse Cavalry 
i is the most important force in the practical work of the 
Democratic and Republican parties in the present cam¬ 
paign. Neither of the old parties’ nominees for President" 
can escape obligation to these old-party bosses or shake 
their practical hold on many and powerful members of 
the National Legislature. 




4 

Under this boss system, no matter which party wins, 
the people seldom win; but the bosses almost always win. 
And they never work for the people. They do not even 
work for the party to which they belong. They work only 
for those anti-public interests whose political employees they 
are. It is these interests that are the real victors in the end. 

The Invisible Government 

These special interests which suck the people’s sub¬ 
stance are bi-partisan. They use both parties. They are 
the invisible government behind our visible government. 
Democratic and Republican bosses alike are brother officers 
of this hidden power. No matter how fiercely they pretend 
to fight one another before election, they work together 
after election. And, acting so, this political conspiracy is 
able to delay, mutilate or defeat sound and needed laws for 
the people’s welfare and the prosperity of honest business 
and even to enacj bad laws, hurtful to the people’s welfare 
and oppressive to honest business. 

It is this invisible government which is the real danger 
to American institutions. Its crude work at Chicago in 
June, which the people were able to see, was no more 
wicked than its skillful work everywhere and always which 
the people are not able to see. 

But an even more serious condition results from the 
unnatural alignment of the old parties. To-day we Ameri¬ 
cans are politically shattered by sectionalism. Through the 
two old parties the tragedy of our history is continued; 
and one great geographical part of the Republic is 
separated from other parts of the Republic by an illogical 
partisan solidarity. 

The South has men and women as genuinely progressive 
and others as genuinely reactionary as those in others parts 
of our country. Yet, for well-known reasons, these sincere 
and honest southern progressives and reactionaries vote to¬ 
gether in a single party, which is neither progressive nor 
reactionary. They vote a dead tradition and a local fear, 
not a living conviction and a national faith. They vote not 
for the Democratic party, but against the Republican party. 
They want to be free from this condition; they can be free 
from it through the National Progressive party. 

For the problems which America faces to-day are 
economic and national. They have to do with a more just 
distribution of prosperity. They concern the living of the 
people; and therefore the more direct government of the 
people by themselves. 

They affect the South exactly as they affect the North, 


5 

the East or the West. It is an artificial and dangerous 
condition that prevents the southern man and woman from 
acting with the northern man and woman who believe the 
same thing. Yet just that is what the old parties do prevent. 

Not only does this out-of-date partisanship cut our Nation 
into two geographical sections; it also robs the Nation of a 
priceless asset of thought in working out our national des¬ 
tiny; The South once was famous for brilliant and con¬ 
structive thinking on national problems, and to-day the 
South has minds as brilliant and constructive as of old. 

But southern intellect cannot freely and fully aid, in terms 
of politics, the solving of the Nation’s problems. This is 
so because of a partisan sectionalism which has nothing to 
do with those problems. Yet these problems can be solved 
only in terms of politics. 

Make Sure the Rule of the People 

The root of the wrongs which hurt the people is tiie 
fact that the people’s government has been taken away 
from them—the invisible government has usurped the peo¬ 
ple’s government. Their government must be given back 
to the people. And so the first purpose of the Progressive 
party is to make sure the rule of the people. The rule of 
The people means that the people themselves shall nomin¬ 
ate, as well as elect, all candidates for office, including 
Senators and Presidents of the United States. What 
profiteth it the people if they do only the electing while the 
invisible government does the nominating? ^ 

The rule of the people means that when the people’s^ 
legislators make a law which hurts the people, the people 
themselves may reject it. The rule of the people means 
that when the people’s legislators refuse to pass a law which ^ 
the people need, the people themselves may pass it. The 
rule of the people means that when the people’s employes 
do not do the people’s work well and honestly, the peojde 
may discharge them exactly as a business man discharges'^ 
employes who do not do their work well and honestly. The 
people’s officials are the people’s servants, not the people’s 
masters. 

We progressives believe in this rule of the people that 
the people themselves may deal with their own destiny. 
Who knows the people’s needs so well as the people them¬ 
selves? Who so patient as the people? Who so long suffer¬ 
ing, who so just? Who so wise to solve their own problems? 

Today these problems concern the living of the people. 

Yet in the present stage of American development these 
problems should not exist in this country. For, in all the 


6 


world there is no land so rich as onrs. Our fields can feed 
hundreds of millions. We have more minerals than the 
whole of Europe. Invention has made easy the turning of 
this vast natural wealth into supplies for all the needs of 
man. One worker today can produce more than twenty 
workers could produce a century ago. 

The Living of the People the Problem 

The people living in this land of gold are the most dar¬ 
ing and resourceful on the globe. Coming from the hardiest 
stock of every nation of the old world their very history in 
the new world has made Americans a peculiar people in 
courage, initiative, love of justice and all the elements of 
independent character. 

And, compared with other peoples, we are very few in 
numbers. There are only ninety millions of us, scattered 
over a continent. Germany has sixty-five millions packed 
in a country very much smaller than Texas. The popula¬ 
tion of Great Britain and Ireland could be set down in 
California and still have more than enough room for the 
population of Holland. If this country were as thickly peo¬ 
pled as Belgium there would be more than twelve hundred 
million instead of only ninety million persons within our 
borders. 

So we have more than enough to supply every human 
being beneath the flag. There ought not to be in this 
Republic a single day of bad business, a single unemployed 
workingman, a single unfed child. American business men 
should never know an hour of uncertainty, discouragement 
or fear; American workingmen never a day of low wages, 
idleness or want. Hunger should never walk in these thinly 
peopled gardens of plenty. 

And yet in spite of all these favors which providence has 
showered upon us, the living of the people is the problem 
of the hour. Hundreds of thousands of hard-working 
Americans find it difficult to get enough to live on. The 
average income of an American laborer is less than $500 
a year. With this he must furnish food, shelter and cloth¬ 
ing for a family. 

Women, whose nourishing and protection should be the 
first care of the State, not only are driven into the mighty 
army of w r age-earners, but are forced to work under unfair 
and degrading conditions. The right of a child to grow 
into a normal human being is sacred; and yet, while small 
and poor countries, packed with people, have abolished 
child labor, American mills, mines, factories and sweat¬ 
shops are destroying hundreds of thousands of American 
children in body, mind and soul. 


7 

At the same time men have grasped fortunes in this 
country so great that the human mind cannot comprehend 
their magnitude. These mountains of wealth are far larger 
than even that lavish reward which no one would deny to 
business risk or genius. 

On the other hand, American business is uncertain and 
unsteady compared with the business of other nations. 
American business men are the l>est and bravest in the 
world, and yet our business conditions hamper their ener¬ 
gies and chill their courage. We have no permanency in 
business affairs, no sure outlook upon the business future. 
This unsettled state of American business prevents it from 
realizing for the people that great and continuous pros¬ 
perity which our country’s location, vast wealth and small 
population justifies. 

“ Pass Prosperity Around ” 

We mean to remedy these conditions. We mean not 
only to make prosperity steady, hut to give tc the many 
who earn it a just share of that prosperity instead of help¬ 
ing the few who do not earn it to take an unjust share. 
The progressive motto is ‘‘Pass prosperity around.” To 
make human living easier, to free the hands of honest busi¬ 
ness, to make trade and commerce sound and steady, to 
protect womanhood, save childhood and restore the dig¬ 
nity of manhood—these are the tasks we must do. 

"What, then, is the progressive answer to these ques¬ 
tions! We are able to give it specifically and concretely. 
The first work before us is the revival of honest business. 
For business is nothing but the industrial and trade activi¬ 
ties of all the people. Men grow the products of the field, 
cut ripe timber from the forest, dig metal from the mine, 
fashion all for human use, carry them to the market place 
and exchange them according to their mutual needs—and 
this is business. 

With our vast advantages, contrasted with the vast dis¬ 
advantages of other nations, American business all the 
time should he the best and steadiest in the world. But it 
is not. Germany, with shallow soil, no mines, only a win¬ 
dow on the seas and a population more than ten times as 
dense as ours, yet has a sounder business, a steadier pros- 
peritv, a more contented because better cared for people 

Wliat, then, must we do to make American business 
better! We must do what poorer nations have done. We 
must end the abuses of business by striking down those 
abuses instead of striking down business itself. We must 
try to make little business big and all business honest in- 


stead or striving to make big business little and yet letting 
it remain dishonest. 

Present-day business is as unlike old-time business as 
the old-time ox-cart is unlike the present-day locomotive. 
Invention has made the whole world over again. The rail¬ 
road. telegraph, telephone have bound the people of modern 
nations into families. To do the business of these closely 
knit millions in every modern country great business con¬ 
cerns came into being. What we call big business is the 
child of the economic progress of mankind. So warfare to 
destroy big business is foolish because it can not succeed 
and wicked because it ought not to succeed. Warfare to 
destroy big business does not hurt big business, which al¬ 
ways comes out on top, so much as it hurts all other busi¬ 
ness which, in such a warfare, never comes out on top. 

Evils of Big Business 

With the growth of big business came business evils 
just as great. It is these evils of big business that hurt the 
people and injure all other business. One of these wrongs 
is over capitalization which taxes the people \s very living. 
Another is the manipulation of prices to the unsettlement of 
all normal business and to the people’s damage. Another 
is interference in the making of the people’s laws and the 
running of the people’s government in the unjust interest 
of evil business. Getting laws that enable particular in¬ 
terests to rob the people, and even to gather criminal riches 
from human health and life is still another. 

An example of such laws is the infamous tobacco legis¬ 
lation of 1902, which authorized the Tobacco Trust to con- 
/ tinue to collect from the people the Spanish War tax, 
amounting to a score of millions of dollars, but to keep that 
tax instead of turning it over to the government, as it had 
been doing. Another example is the shameful meat legis¬ 
lation, by which the Beef Trust had the meat it sent abroad 
inspected by the government so that foreign countries would 
take its product and yet was permitted to sell diseased 
meat to our own people. It is incredible that laws like these 
could ever get on the Nation’s statute books. The invisible 
government put them there; and only the universal wrath 
of an enraged people corrected them when, after years, the 
people discovered the outrages. 

It is to get just such laws as these and to prevent the 
passage of laws to correct them, as well as to keep off the 
l statute books general laws which will end the general abuses 
^ of big business that these few criminal interests corrupt 
our politics, invest in public officials and keep in power in 


9 

both parties that type of politicians and party managers 
who debase American politics. 

Behind rotten laws and preventing sound laws, stands 
the corrupt boss; behind the corrupt boss stands the robber 
interest; and commanding these powers of pillage stands 
bloated human greed It is this conspiracy of evil we must 
overthrow if we would get the honest laws we need. It is 
this invisible government we must destroy if we would save 
American institutions. 

Other nations have ended the very same business evils 
from which we suffer by clearly defining business wrong¬ 
doing and then making it a criminal offense, punishable by 
imprisonment. Yet these foreign nations encourage big 
business itself and foster all honest business. But they 
do not tolerate dishonest business, little or big. 


Sherman Law Antiquated 


What, then, shall we Americans do? Common sense 
and the experience of the world says that we ought to keep 
the good big business does for us and stop the wrongs that 
big business does to us. Yet we have done just the other 
thing. We have struck at big business itself and have not 
even aimed to strike at the evils of big business. Nearly 
twenty-five years ago Congress passed a law to govern 
American business in the present time which Parliament 
passed in the reign of King James to govern English busi¬ 
ness in that time. 

For a quarter of a century the courts have tried to make 
this law work. Yet during this very time trusts grew 
greater in number and power than in the whole history of 
the world before; and their evils flourished unhindered and 
unchecked. These great business concerns grew because 
natural laws made them grow and artificial law at war with 
natural law could not stop their growth. But their evils 
grew faster than the trusts themselves because avarice 
nourished those evils and no law of any kind stopped 
avarice from nourishing them. 

Nor is this the worst. Under the shifting interpreta¬ 
tion of the Sherman law, uncertainty and fear is chilling 
the energies of the great body of honest American business 
men. As the Sherman law now stands, no two business men 
can arrange their mutual affairs and be sure that they are 
not law-breakers. This is the main hindrance to the im¬ 
mediate and permanent revival of American business. If 
German or English business men, with all their disadvan¬ 
tages compared with our advantages, were manacled by our 
Sherman law, as it stands, they soon would be bankrupt. 


/ 


10 

Indeed, foreign business men declare that, if tbeir countries 
had such a law, so administered, they could not do business 
at all. 

Even this is not all. By the decrees of onr courts, 
under the Sherman law, the two mightiest trusts on earth 
have actually been licensed, in the practical outcome, to go 
on doing every wrong they ever committeed. Under the de¬ 
crees of the courts the Oil and Tobacco Trusts still can 
raise prices unjustly and already have done so. They still 
can issue watered stock and surely will do so. They still 
can throttle other business men and the United Cigar Stores 
Company now is doing so. They still can corrupt our poli¬ 
tics and this moment are indulging in that practice. 

Mock Battle With Criminal Capital 

The people are tired of this mock battle with criminal 
capital. They do not want to hurt business, but they do 
want to get something done about the trust question that 
amounts to something. What good does it do any man to 
read in his morning paper that the courts have “dissolved” 
the Oil Trust, and then read in his evening paper that he 
must thereafter pay a higher price for his oil than ever 
before? What good does it do the laborer who smokes his 
pipe to be told that the courts have “dissolved” the To¬ 
bacco Trust and yet find that he must pay the same or a 
higher price for the same short-weight package of tobacco? 
Yet all this is the practical result of the suits against these 
two greatest trusts in the world. 

Such business chaos and legal paradoxes as American 
business suffers from can be found nowhere else in the world. 
Rival nations do not fasten legal bail and chain upon their 
business—no, they put wings on its flying feet. Rival 
nations do not tell their business men that if they go for¬ 
ward with legitimate enterprise the penitentiary may be 
their goal. No! Rival nations tell their business men that 
so long as they do honest business their governments will 
not hinder but will help them. 

But these rival nations do tell their business men that 
if they do any evil that our business men do, prison bars 
await them. These rival nations do tell their business men 
that if they issue watered stock or cheat the people in any 
way, prison cells will be their homes. 

Just this is what all honest American business wants* 
just this is what dishonest American business does not 
want; just this is what the American people propose to 
have; just this the national Republican platform of 1908 
pledged the people that we would give them; and just this 
important pledge the administration, elected on that plat- 


11 

form, repudiated as ic repudiated the more immediate tariff 
pledge. 

Both these reforms, so vital to honest American busi¬ 
ness, the Progressive party will accomplish. Neither evil 
interests nor reckless demagogues can swerve us from our 
purpose; for we are free from both and fear neither. 

We mean to put new business laws on our statute books 
which will tell American business men what they can do and 
what they cannot do. We mean to make our business laws 
clear instead of foggy—to make them plainly state just what 
things are criminal and what are lawful. And we mean >2 
that the penalty for things criminal shall be prison sen-'/ 
tences that actually punish the real offender, instead of 
money fines that hurt nobody but the people, who must 
pay them in the end. 

The Progressive Message to Business 

And then we mean to send the message forth to hun¬ 
dreds of thousands of brilliant minds and brave hearts en¬ 
gaged in honest business, that they are not criminals but 
honorable men in their work to make good business in this 
Republic. Sure of victory, we even now say, “Go forward, 
American business men, and know that behind you, support¬ 
ing you, encouraging you, are the power and approval of 
the greatest people under the sun. Go forward, American 
business men, and feed full the fires beneath American fur¬ 
naces; and give employment to every American laborer 
who asks for work. Go forward, American business men, 
and capture the markets of the world for American trade; 
and know that on the wings of your commerce you carry 
liberty throughout the world and to every inhabitant 
thereof. Go forward, American business men, and realize 
that in the time to come it shall be said of you, as it is said 
of the hand that rounded Peter’s Dome, 4 he builded better 
than he knew.’ ” 

The next great business reform we must have to 
steadily increase American prosperity is to change the 
method of building our tariffs. The tariff must be taken 
out oi‘ politics and treated as a business question instead of 
as a political question. Heretofore, we have done just the 
other thing. That is why American business is upset every 
few years by unnecessary tariff upheavals and is weakened 
by uncertainty in the periods between. The greatest need 
of business is certainty; but the only thing certain about 
our tariff is uncertainty. 

What, then, shall we do to make our tariff changes 
strengthen business instead of weakening business? Rival 
protective tariff nations have answered that question. 


12 


Common sense has answered it. Next to our need to make 
the Sherman law modern, understandable and just, our 
greatest fiscal need is a genuine, permanent, non-partisan 
tariff commission. 

Five years ago, when the fight for this great business 
measure was begun in the Senate the bosses of both parties 
were against it. So, when the last revision of the tariff was 
on and a tariff commission might have been written into 
tlie tariff law, the administration would not aid this reform. 
When two years later the administration supported it 
weakly, the bi-partisan boss system killed it. There has not 
been and will not be any sincere and honest effort by the 
old parties to get a tariff commission. There has not been 
and will not be any sincere and honest purpose by those 
parties to take the tariff out of politics. 

For the tariff in politics is the excuse for those sham 
political battles which give the spoilers their opportunity. 
The tariff in politics is one of the invisible government’s 
methods of wringing tribute from the people. Through the 
tariff in politics the beneficiaries of tariff excesses are cared 
for, no matter which party is 4 ‘revising.” 

The Progressive Tariff Proposal 

Who has forgotten the tariff scandals that made Presi¬ 
dent Cleveland denounce the Wilson-Gorman bill as “a 
perfidy and a dishonor?” Who ever can forget the brazen 
robberies forced into the Payne-Aldrich bill which Mr. Taft 
defended as “the best ever made?” If every one else for¬ 
gets these things the interests that profited by them never 
will forget them. The bosses and lobbyists that grew rich 
by putting them through never will forget them. That is 
why the invisible government and its agents want to keep 
the old method of tariff building. For, though such tariff 
“revisions” may make lean years for the people, they make 
fat years for the powers of pillage and their agents. 

So neither of the old parties can honestly carry out any 
tariff policies which they pledge the people to carry out. 
But even if they could and even if they were sincere, the 
old party platforms are in error on tariff policy. The 
Democratic platform declares for free trade; but free trade 
is wrong and ruinous. The Republican platform permits 
extortion; but tariff extortion is robbery by law. The Pro¬ 
gressive party is for honest protection; and honest pro¬ 
tection is right and a condition of American prosperity. 

A tariff high enough to give American producers the 
American market when they make honest goods and sell 
them at honest prices but low enough that when they sell 


13 

dishonest goods at dishonest prices, foreign competition can 
correct both evils; a tariff high enough to enable American 
producers to pay our workingmen American wages and so 
arranged that the workingmen will get such wages; a busi¬ 
ness tariff whose changes will be so made as to reassure 
business instead of disturbing it—this is the tariff and the 
method of its making in which the Progressive party be¬ 
lieves, for which it does battle and which it proposes to 
write into the laws of the land. 

The Payne-Aldrich tariff law must be revised imme¬ 
diately in accordance to these principles. At the same time 
a genuine, permanent, non-partisan tariff commission must 
be fixed in the law as firmly as the Interstate Commerce 
Commission. Neither of the old parties can do this work. 
For neither of the old parties believes in such a tariff; and, 
what is more serious, special privilege is too thoroughly 
woven into the fiber of both old parties to allow them to 
make such a tariff. The Progressive party only is free 
from these influences. The Progressive party only believes 
in the sincere enactment of a sound tariff policy. The Pro¬ 
gressive party only can change the tariff as it must be 
changed. 

Other Important and Pressing Questions 

These are samples of the reforms in the laws of busi¬ 
ness that we intend to put on the Nation’s statute books. 
But there are other questions as important and pressing 
that we mean to answer by sound and humane laws. Child 
labor in factories, mills, mines and sweat-shops must be 
ended throughout the Republic. Such labor is a crime 
against childhood because it prevents the growth of normal 
manhood and womanhood. It is a crime against the Nation 
because it prevents the growth of a host of children into 
strong, patriotic and intelligent citizens. 

Only the Nation can stop this industrial vice. The States 
cannot stop it. The States never stopped any national 
wrong—and child labor is a national wrong. To leave it 
to the State alone is unjust to business; for if some States 
stop it and other States do not, business men of the former 
are at a disadvantage with the business men of the latter, 
because they must sell in the same market goods made by 
manhood labor at manhood wages in competition with goods 
made by childhood labor at childhood wages. To leave it 
to the States is unjust to manhood labor; for childhood 
labor in any State lowers manhood labor in every State, 
because the product of childhood labor in any State com¬ 
petes with the product of manhood labor in every State. 
Children workers at the looms in South Carolina means bay- 


onets at tlie breasts of men and women workers in Massa¬ 
chusetts who strike for living wages. Let the States do what 
they can, and more power to their arm; but let the Nation 
do what it should and cleanse our flag from this stain. 

Modern industrialism lias changed the status of women. 
Women now are wage earners in factories, stores and other 
places of toil. In hours of labor and all the physical con¬ 
ditions of industrial effort they must compete with men. 
And they must do it at lower wages than men receive— 
wages which, in most cases, are not enough for these women 
workers to live on. 

Votes for Women Theirs by Right 

This is inhuman and indecent. It is unsocial and un¬ 
economic. It is immoral and unpatriotic. Toward women 
the Progressive party proclaims the chivalry of the State. 
We propose to protect women wage-earners by suitable 
laws, an example of which is the minimum wage for women 
workers—a wage which shall be high enough to at least 
buy clothing, food and shelter for the woman toiler. 

The care of the aged is one of the most perplexing prob¬ 
lems of modern life. How is the workingman with less than 
five hundred dollars a year, and with earning power waning 
as his own years advance, to provide for aged parents or 
other relatives in addition to furnishing food, shelter and 
clothing for his wife and children! What is to become of 
the family of the laboring man whose strength has been 
sapped by excessive toil and who lias been thrown upon the 
industrial scrap heap! It is questions like these we must 
answer if we are to justify free institutions. They are 
questions to which the masses of people are chained as to 
a body of death. And they are questions which other and 
poorer nations are answering. 

We progressives mean that America shall answer them. 
The Progressive party is the helping hand to those whom 
a vicious industrialism has maimed and crippled. We are 
for the conservation of our natural resources; but even more 
we are for the conservation of human life. Our forests, 
water power and minerals are valuable and must be saved 
from the spoilers; but men, women and children are more 
valuable and they, too, must be saved from the spoilers. 

Because women, as much as men, are a part of our 
economic and social life, women, as much as men, should 
have the voting power to solve all economic and social 
problems. Votes for women are theirs as a matter of nat¬ 
ural right alone; votes for women should be theirs as a mat¬ 
ter of political wisdom also. As wage-earners, they should 


15 

help to solve the labor problem; as property owners they 
should help to solve the tax problem; as wives and mothers 
they should help to solve all the problems that concern the 
home. And that means all national problems; for the 
Nation abides at the fireside. 

If it is said that women cannot help defend the Nation 
in time of war and therefore that they should not help to 
determine the Nation’s destinies in time of peace, the 
answer is that women suffer and serve in time of conflict 
as much as men who carry muskets. And the deeper answer 
is that those who bear the Nation’s soldiers are as much 
the Nation’s defenders as their sons. 

Public spokesmen for the invisible government say that 
many of our reforms are unconstitutional. The same kind 
of men said the same thing of every effort the Nation has 
made to end national abuses. But in every case, whether 
in the courts, at the ballot box, or on the battlefield, the 
vitality of the Constitution was vindicated. 

The Constitution a Living Thing 

The Progressive party believes that the Constitution 
is a living thing, growing with the people’s growth, 
strengthening with the people’s strength, aiding the people 
in their struggle for life, liberty and the pursuit of happi¬ 
ness, permitting the people to meet all their needs as con¬ 
ditions change. The opposition believes that the Constitu¬ 
tion is a dead form, holding back the people’s growth, 
shackling the people’s strength but giving a free hand to 
malign powers that prey upon the people. The first words 
of the Constitution are “We the people,” and they de¬ 
clare that the Constitution’s purpose is “to form a perfect 
Union and to promote the general welfare.” To do just 
that is the very heart of the progressive cause. 

The Progressive party asserts anew the vitality of the 
Constitution. We believe in the true doctrine of states’ 
rights, which forbids the Nation from interfering with 
states’ affairs, and also forbids the stales from interfering 
with national affairs. The combined intelligence and com¬ 
posite conscience of the American people is as irresistible 
as it is righteous; and the Constitution does not prevent 
that force from working out the general welfare. 

From certain sources we hear preachments about the 
danger of our reforms to American institutions. What is 
the purpose of American institutions? Why was this Re¬ 
public established? What does the flag stand for? What 
do these things mean ? 

They mean that the people shall be free to correct 
human abuses. 


16 


They mean that men, women and children shall not be 
denied the opportunity to grow stronger and nobler. 

They mean that the people shall have the power to make 
our land each day a better place to live in. 

They mean the realities of liberty and not the academics 
of theory. 

'They mean the actual progress of the race in tangible 
items of daily living and not the theoretics of barren dis¬ 
putation. 

If they do not mean these things they are as sounding 
brass and tinkling cymbals. 

A Nation of strong, upright men and women; a Nation 
of wholesome homes, realizing the best ideals; a Nation 
whose power is glorified by its justice and whose justice is 
the conscience of scores of millions of God-fearing people— 
that is the Nation the people need and want. And that is 
the Nation they shall have. 

For never doubt that we Americans will make good 
the real meaning of our institutions. Never doubt that we 
will solve, inirighteousness and wisdom, every vexing prob¬ 
lem. N'ever^oubt that in the end, the hand from above 
that leads us upward will prevail over the hand from below 
that drags us downward. Never doubt that we are indeed 
a Nation whose God is the Lord. 

And, so, never doubt that a braver, fairer, cleaner 
America surely will come; that a better and brighter life for 
all beneath the flag surely will be achieved. Those who now 
scoff soon will pray. Those who now doubt soon will believe. 

Soon the night will pass; and when, to the Sentinel on 
me ramparts of Liberty the anxious ask: “Watchman, 
what of the night,” his answer will be “Lo, the morn ap¬ 
pear eth.” 

Knowing the price* we must pay, the sacrifice we must 
make, the burdens we must carry, the assaults we must 
endure—knowing full well the cost—yet we enlist, and we 
enlist for the war. For we know the justice of our cause, 
and we know, too, its certain triumph. 

Not reluctantly then,, but eagerly, not with faint hearts 
but strong, do we now advance upon the enemies of the 
people. For the call that comes to us is the call that came 
to our fathers. As th$y responded so shall we. 


“He hath sounded forth a trumpet that shall never call retreat, 
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat. 
Oh, be swift our souls to answer Him, be jubilant our feet. 

Our God is marching on.” 


MAIL AND EXPRESS JOD PRIN 
Stoddard-Sutlierland Press 
9-15 Murray Street, New York ** 




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